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March 12th, 2015

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According to figures from Nordea Kredit, the average age of the first-time home buyer in Denmark is getting older and older. 

While in 1981, some 58 percent of Danes aged 25 to 29 already owned their home, in 2014 it was only 28 percent.

Similarly, 71 percent of people aged 30 to 39 owned their home in 1981. Today, the figure is only 53 percent. 

The downsize of living in big cities
However, Lise Nytoft Bergmann, Nordea's property economist, explains this may be due to more people choosing to live in big cities where a large number of the properties are co-operatives, which cannot be privately owned.

In Copenhagen, for instance, only 25 percent of the properties are privately owned. 

"If you choose to move to Copenhagen, there's a fairly high chance that you won't end up owning your home, simply because there are so many rental or co-operative housings there," Bergmann told Politiken.

Without family support it's expensive 
​Curt Liliegreen, the head of secretariat at the Knowledge Centre for Housing Economics, points out that a home buyer today must raise at least 5 percent of the total value as a downpayment. 

"Because of this requirement, young people tend to postpone purchasing a home, especially if they don't have wealthy parents to help them out or still have student debt," Liliegreen told Politiken.

Moreover, more parents are buying apartments and leasing them to their children to use during their studies. This means that they are increasingly not being forced to move out after finishing their studies as they would have been if they lived in university accommodation. 

Figures from Statistics Denmark show that in the period from 1993 to 2010, Danes typically stayed in their first home for a period of three to four years before they moved on.